Tony McManus
Edinburgh Folk Club
Rob Adams
FOUR STARS
If Tony McManus was asked whether he was travelling for business or pleasure on his re-entry into the UK and if, on answering the former, he gave his occupation as entertainer, the trades descriptions authorities would have no argument. Every item in the Canada-based, Paisley-born guitarist’s repertoire comes with an anecdote or some other mirthful observation/bit of fun.
Pipers pass on tunes to McManus with added interest, such as Pipe Major Bill Livingstone recalling his dad’s admonition to him for milking the Lament for Viscount Dundee’s emotions (“For God’s sake, even grief has a tempo”). Harpers’ claims on tunes result in borders being redrawn and where was McManus going with that apparently absent-minded drift into Stairway to Heaven? Into a slew of alternative versions including Strathspey to Heaven, Miles Davis’s So What Stairway to Heaven, and a particularly cheeky Steve Reich-style interpretation.
McManus hadn’t had the best of journeys over and was clearly needin’ his bed, a factor that really only impacted on the two or three songs he included. His fingers were nothing if not alert, though, as he followed beautifully articulated slow airs with jigs and reels that achieved an uncanny level of melodic fluency driven by hammered-on grace notes and thumb-slapped basslines.
Two departed friends, piper Gordon Duncan and fellow guitarist Isaac Guillory, inspired superb tributes, the former’s Sleeping Tune emerging with warmly rounded, elegiac feeling and the latter’s Desert Dance featuring a brilliant call and response of fretted phrases repeated in harmonics as if two guitarists were involved. With Bach and Satie pieces alongside the traditional tunes, it was a wide-ranging masterclass that McManus is repeating around Scotland this week.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here